


twin high maintenance machines

by thecanary



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Afterlife, i guess?, kind of a crossover but a surprise one so im not taggint it, post-death, set after the last book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 10:21:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16061099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecanary/pseuds/thecanary
Summary: after the ellimist, rachel meets someone else, someone pretty similar to her, in a lot of ways





	twin high maintenance machines

**Author's Note:**

> title from "this year" by the mountain goats because what is more rachel than "im gonna make it/through this year/if it kills me"

"Who are you?"

It wasn't an empty space that Rachel found herself in, nor was it enclosed. Looking for the edges of it seemed impossible, it gave her a headache to wonder where she was. Instead, she focussed on the girl in front of her, hair in a short bob, dressed in dirty clothes, hands shaking in front of her. Rachel looked down at herself, her body no worse for wear given the fight that had - that had killed her, right? She was dead.

"Is this the afterlife? Because I don't know that I buy that," Rachel said, even though her first question had received no response.

The other girl looked up at this.

"I don't think so. I think it's just where you go."

The girl's accent wasn't one that Rachel was used to hearing. Australian, or English maybe. It's the sort of thing she'd be able to tell if she'd spent the last three years watching television instead of fighting a war.

"Have you been here long?"

She shook her head. "I just died?"

The sentence was left as a question but there were no two ways about it, if the girl was there, wherever they were, with Rachel, she wasn't alive, unless she was alien, and no alien looks that human.

Rachel walked over to her, the adrenaline and anger and power she'd felt in her final moments fading. "So did I," Rachel spoke with more finality; not to say she was any braver, any more prepared, but she embraced it. "But I think I died doing the right thing."

The stranger looked up into Rachel's eyes. "I don't think the right thing would have landed you here."

"It was a war," Rachel began, not failing to notice to look of recognition in the other girl's eyes. "I didn't have a real choice.  So I let my death make a difference."

This received a nod in response, and the girl's hands stopped shaking. They looked filthy, covered in ash and debris, and Rachel cringed as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I died for my friends. They knew. I just have to have faith that it worked."

Rachel nodded, a slight smile on her face. Maybe the universe decided that they had enough in common that they deserved to talk. It didn't make a lot of sense, but the last few years of Rachel's life weren't logical either, so this wasn't too unreasonable.

"I think I won the war," Rachel said. "I know in my heart I changed something, and my friends, they saw me. I'm sure yours saw you."

There was silence between them for a moment, but it was a silence of white noise, where you could hear a pin drop; the nature of wherever they were seemed so contrary.

"My friend called out my name."

"I told a boy I loved him."

"I killed someone."  
"They manage to take you out with them?"  
"Other way 'round."

"Wish I'd tried that. I died with a smile. That has to count for something at least."

"I tried to. But I was so scared. I was so fucking scared. What was the last thing you did..."

The girl trailed off, realising she didn't know Rachel's name.

"Rachel. I smiled. I looked at my friends, I smiled, and I made sure I'd made a change. What about you..."

Rachel trailed off this time, offering the stranger the same courtesy to fill in the blank.

"I pulled the pin out of a grenade. And took three steps. It's Robyn, by the way."

She extended an ashy hand to shake, and Rachel took it in her own, not knowing what this would mean next.


End file.
